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The weekend started a little early when I left work during the afternoon on Friday to be home with the kids as Shelly headed for Columbus.  Let Brock play in the basement while I installed the WB Magic 80 fork on the Monocog Flight.  Decided to go with the suspension fork for the Lake Hope race.  After dinner, Ethan and I threw the bikes and B.o.B. trailer in the truck and headed to the paved road to take Brock on his first bike ride. I think he enjoyed it, in fact, he started to fall asleep.  It was swamp like humid out.  Back to the house and Brock and Ethan took a dip in the pool to cool off.

Saturday started with the tractor.  The storms a few days earlier did a real number to the driveway.  The Kubota made quick work of it though and we soon had driveway without ditches in it.  Shelly and the two youngest boys headed to town around lunch, so I headed out on the bike.  Just a mile in, I came up on a helicopter trimming a power line right of way.  Fun to watch, not sure I would want to fly that chopper though.  Took the Masi out to Chicken Hill to get in some good climbing.  All in, just over 40 miles and about 3000 feet of climbing.

Sunday was the typical, out to church for sound checks at 8, Sunday school at 9:15, service at 10:30, to my folks for lunch at 1.  The weather had changed, for the better.  High temps in the upper 70's and low humidity.  Late in the afternoon I headed out to Lake Hope State Park with the Monocog for some single speed and single track.  With responsibilities at home , church, and work, compounded with the extra wet spring, this is only the second time in 2011 I have been on a trail.  The road miles have been good to my legs, but I forget sometimes how many upper body muscles I use on the trail.  Did my favorite loop.  In at Hope Furnace, up Bobcat to Wildcat to Copperhead and back out. 15+ miles with a couple thousand feet of climbing.

A note on elevation.  I use a Garmin Forerunner 305 to track all my rides and runs.  The GPS estimated elevation is terribly inaccurate.  All my elevation numbers come from SportTracks with the Elevation Correction Plugin.  All my data is smoothed over 3 seconds and only includes grades steeper than 2%.  Garmin Connect uses some unknown algorithm and always shows a significant difference.  I have also used sites like MapMyRide and RideWithGPS.  Each one is different.  For example: Saturday ride was 1056ft at MapMyRide, 2026ft at Garmin Connect, 3046 with SportTracks, and 3045 at RideWithGPS.  Sunday was 548ft at MapMyRide, 1264ft at Garmin Connect, 2136ft with SportTracks, and 3406 at RideWithGPS.  That is a huge variance.  I believe MapMyRide and Garmin Connect both do some heavy smoothing.  Around here though, the smoothing takes away from a lot of the hills.  I also suspect that RideWithGPS may do very little smoothing or includes grades that are less than 2%.  I seem to get the most consistent results with SportTracks, which is what I primarily use to log my rides.

Three days, three rides.